Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital of Scotland, the seat of the Scottish parliament and government, the largest city by area and the second largest by population in the country. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a 30 square miles (78 km2) rural area. Located in the south-east of Scotland, Edinburgh lies on the east coast of the Central Belt, along the Firth of Forth, near the North Sea. Source: Wikipedia

Before coming to Edinburgh, I caught up with Simmons's last Fringe show, Fail, in London. Unfortunately, that title and this show are interchangeable. Essentially, Meanwhile is Simmons's home-made Twitter feed with two devices at work. Simmons attempts to answer questions put to him through various mediums while a female voice interjects with an activity going on simultaneously somewhere else in the world. At this point, Simmons jumps around to act out someone in Germany getting annoyed with their flatmate – or some other scenario.

Nick Helm's brash and bullish show, which broadly depicts a clumsy, heart-on-sleeve romantic having a meltdown, was one of the finds of last year's Edinburgh festival. The antics of a man resembling Nick Frost playing a sergeant

This tiny show of just three paintings, hung in a small, chapel-like rotunda in Edinburgh's National Gallery, is of great importance. Vermeer of Delft painted little. He came to fame late. Unlike Rembrandt and Gerrit Dou, he was not celebrated during his lifetime, and it was not until the middle of the 19th century that his works were rescued from oblivion, and began to be valued and evaluated properly. He produced about 60 works during his lifetime, of which just 36 survive. Given that he had a working life of approximately 20 years, this amounts to about three paintings a year.

Full-back Isa Nacewa recorded 14 points from his boot to inspire Leinster to a narrow 19-18 win over Edinburgh at the Royal Dublin Society on Saturday. The Scottish side scored tries in each half but Nacewa kicked four penalties and converted Andrew Conway's try to make sure Leinster prevailed.

Andy Robinson, the Scotland head coach, has named four uncapped players in his squad for the autumn Test series. Glasgow stand-off Ruaridh Jackson, Edinburgh pair Greig Laidlaw and Jim Thompson, and Northampton back Joe Ansbro are in Robinson's 34-man group. Scotland face New Zealand, South Africa and Samoa next month.